


In Fragments

by Zharena



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Light Angst, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2018-12-12 05:31:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11730492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zharena/pseuds/Zharena
Summary: Small, assorted pieces of writing centering around scenes that could exist in canon, but aren't quite long enough to stand on their own. Will cover a variety of themes and ratings.





	1. Warmth (Keith)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A desert night with Keith.

The desert is cool at night, perhaps even a little too much so. Keith shivers as he tugs his jacket a little closer to his body, cursing under his breath for never fixing the zipper on the thing, and tries to turn his attention back to the book. Squinting in the dim light, he hovers over the pages – something about cryptography – and glances back to one of the photos he’s taken of the caves nearby, studying the symbols for comparison. 

He lasts for a few minutes like this, going back and forth between the two sets of information, before he realizes that he can barely tell the difference between the symbols listed in the old book. Frustrated, he pushes his work to the side as another shiver travels across his body. 

The only other sources of warmth he has in that tiny shack are a dirty, rumpled sheet sitting on the couch and the light coming from the copper electric lantern sitting on the table in front of him. There’s his old uniform jacket, too, but he doesn’t consider it an option – it reminds him of a time in his life when things seemed focused, settled for once, when his path was clear and guided.

(It was only nine months ago, but to him, it may as well have been a lifetime.)

Sighing, he weighs his options. The sheet will take the edge off things, perhaps ease his shivering, but won’t help much, so he tugs the lantern closer to him. He sets his gloves next to it, letting his hands hover an inch away from the glass. A small smile creeps across his face as the warmth spreads over his palms. There’s something about the sensation that makes him _feel_ , something about how the glow fills the room that sends jolts of nostalgia and sentimentality.

For a moment, he forgets that he’s all alone in the middle of a desert, in a tiny, run-down shack that feels like it’s going to fall apart at any given moment in time. He runs his tongue against his teeth, feeling it wanting to _click_ with the right word, but it’s almost as if it doesn’t exist for him.

Perhaps it never did.


	2. Memory (Coran)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Coran's memories change meaning over the course of his life.

Coran’s dreams came in flashes and flutters, the lullabies of memory woven by ghostly, calloused hands. He’d often find himself reaching out to them, trying to grasp those visions in his own, to feel their warmth and tenderness and _familiarity_ , or what little semblance of those they could offer him. Days that had seemed like so long ago—even then, he reminded himself—of tearing through the grass on Altea, chasing after a younger Alfor. Of the two skipping out on lessons, the prospect of diplomacy elusive to them under the hot sun. Endless days stacked on top of one another, the threads of time thinning out and fraying, tangling together into one huge blur.

He remembered a time when the scariest thing to him was simply growing up. And once that had happened, it was replaced by something else: regret, or the fear of it. Though he had been content to walk the path paved for him since birth, he feared becoming ambivalent about what he had ultimately chosen. Retreating back into those memories eased the burden back then, helped to remind him of what was important, why he’d done what he had. 

Peace, he surmised. They brought him peace.

Everything changed after Altea’s destruction, after he dropped into a slumber only to be woken up some ten thousand years later, long after his memories had been interred in stardust, only known by a handful of the galaxy’s inhabitants. Confiding in Allura only did so much to ease the burden of having hundreds of years of joyful memories tumbling around in his brain, reminding him of everything that had once eased his fears. She herself was barely out of childhood, and though she’d seen far too much already, she still lacked the sheer quantity of experiences the older Altean had. So, he had no choice but to tune them out as they battled for his consciousness’s attention, only recalling them to pluck out necessary information before burying them where he couldn’t reach. 

Inevitably, though, they would crawl their way back to him in some fashion, in through his dreams where he would believe they were real, their ephemerality only marked by streaks of consciousness consciousness seeping through. With each awakening and subsequent realization, the hole in his chest would grow just a little bit more, the longing for the past intensifying. 

It was on a night much like that one, where he’d woken up after a particularly potent memory—one of his first kiss at the highest point of elevation on Altea—when he realized he’d had enough. Quietly, he slipped out of bed, heading towards the medical bay, where he would end his dreaming once and for all.

Coran rubbed his eyes and sighed as he inputted a series of codes, digging out the formulation he needed from one of the valleys in his brain. The generator whirred to life and clanged for a few minutes before a beep went off, signaling the end of its procedure. He ran his fingertips along the circular rim of the door, the glass just distorted enough that he couldn’t see its contents, and pulled on the handle. Inside lay a bottle’s worth of orange pills, perfectly designed to permit him a dreamless sleep, free of nostalgic memories.

He would miss seeing them. But if he wanted to have any hope of saving the galaxy, of waking up every day without having to fight that creeping longing, it was a sacrifice he was willing to make.


	3. Storm (Lance)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When things are similar, but not quite so.

_One, two, three._

Lance counted the stars, what few he could keep track of in the vast, endless void of space. They came as they left, bursting and blazing through his brain, the numbers running off his tongue in taps and clicks as he fell into a rhythm that he hadn’t recited in…

A long time. 

Not since the last time he saw it rain, back when they were still on Earth. The Garrison had experienced a rarity then: a desert rain. It wasn’t much—a smattering of drops laid haphazardly by the sky—but it had been just enough to calm his nerves, hushing layers of anxiety drilled into him by instructors, by himself. Beneath his closed eyes, the world stilled and he retreated into his mind, the Garrison vanishing as he left its freezing walls and chased after the sound of the rain. For a moment, he was back home, listening to gently timed taps against the thin walls of his house, lulling him to sleep.

Out in space, there were showers, but no rain. Clouds of dust, fragments of stars and asteroids hurtling through the blackness, auroras grasping at him with their fingers of light, but nothing damp, nothing rhythmic and soothing. It was wild, he thought, how much he could miss something out there, but then again, it wasn’t much different from the Garrison, was it?

An apprehension seized him, then, a clinging fear that burrowed itself in his chest and made tears spring in his eyes. The realization that yes, _yes it was different_ , it was so fucking different from everything that had come before. At least, then, there had been the possibility of seeing a storm, even if it was rare. At least, then, he knew he would eventually see one again.

He knew for a fact that it rained on the other planets: he’d overheard some of their inhabitants talking about when the next wet season would be and what it meant for them. He’d kept his observations to himself, of course, wouldn’t want any new allies to think that the paladins were conducting some sort of weird surveillance on them. Except for the sharp exhale he let out, the clenched fist he let his fingers curl into, the jealousy that burned through his veins at the thought of something so normal happening. Lance wrote it off as sleep deprivation, aggravation caused by stress. 

So he took a shovel, buried it deep somewhere in his psyche, burned the map to its location. He kept going, kept fighting as his heart yearned for the thing he wouldn’t dare himself to unearth: the hovering, inevitable anguish that would surely arise should he think of it.

But it hadn’t been very successful, had it?


	4. Sea (Lance)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance goes to a beach.

Lance closes his eyes, breathing in the sea, the breeze, the earth. He digs his toes into the damp sand, burying them as far as he can below the waves. The ocean nips at his ankles, leaving behind trickles of white foam, but the rest of his feet are safe. He shivers.

What a weird feeling, he thinks – to be able to hide away one part of yourself from the spear of certain discomfort while the other takes the brunt of the attack. It's a truth that's been present since the _beginning_ , but he's never allowed it to surface. Too many lives to save, too many others to miss. Awareness was something he could only spare in fleeting moments on the people who mattered most. 

Another wave passes over. He's small, around five or six, and the water reaches almost all the way up to his chest. He knows his mom will kill him if he's out this far, but he can't stop himself: he wants to chase the sky as far as he can, even if it means crossing the endless ocean. A blade of water laps at his chin and reaches up, grasping at the horizon with wide eyes.

Lance opens his eyes. The water is a deep scarlet; the foam, a pale blue. The sea is finite. 

He doesn't move his hand.


End file.
